ECLIPSE
There is more music in the world than one person could listen to in a lifetime. Sometimes, we don’t see the forest for the trees, which means that a lot of fantastic music slips under our radar, music that begs questions like “Why have we never heard this before?” and “What other treasures are waiting to be discovered?”
Mattias Spee went on a “musical treasure hunt” to shed light on the hidden gems of the piano repertoire.
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TOETSENPARADE
Toetsenparade is a festival for the keyboard instruments of all shapes and sizes. For the 2024 edition, Mattias Spee was invited as artist in residence. He curated a program full of artists who are each inventing and reinventing keyboard instruments in their own way.
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NOVA SONANTIA
Since 2023, Mattias Spee has collaborated frequently with Nova Sonantia, a string ensemble that focuses on contemporary classical music, lesser-known repertoire from history and thematic concert programmes. Due to their overlapping interest, it only seemed only natural that Nova Sonantia and Spee should work together. Over the years they have had many fruitful collaborations.
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INTO SILENCE
Dutch composer Jo Sporck celebrated his 70th birthday by writing a new concerto for piano and orchestra, commissioned by festival November Music. It was performed by Mattias Spee, accompanied by PhilZuid and conductor Ed Spanjaard. The piece interweaves several complex dance rhythms in irregular meters, which results in a light-footedness in spite of the harsh, piercing modernist vocabulary.
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DUTCH CLASSICAL TALENT
Every year, Dutch Classical Talent selects four young musicians to tour all major concert venues in The Netherlands. For the 2023/2024 season, they picked Mattias Spee. The jury of Dutch Classical Talent described Spee as follows:
“An idiosyncratic and versatile musician, who also improvises and composes. In his playing, his air and his choice of repertoire, you can see his activist and rebellious nature. He doesn’t let anyone tell him what to do and completely sets his own course.”
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SPIRITUALS
Mattias Spee has regularly worked with countertenor Arturo den Hartog over the years. Their latest project has been a program of African-American spirituals. Because the spiritual as a genre is very eclectic, being tied to jazz, gospel, classical, blues and many other styles, Spee and Den Hartog feel a strong connection with this repertoire. They both have a broad musical interest beyond their classical background and feel they particularly shine as a duo when performing this music.
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MUSEUMNACHT
For the 2023 edition of the Museumnacht, Mattias Spee was asked to curate the program for the Pianola Museum. Apollon Kalamenios, Elena Pisano and Aleksandra Tonelli joined him for a relay-concert that lasted all night. They each paired their own music with a pianola roll that inspired them.
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RIVER
Mattias Spee usually composes by himself, but his collaboration with Bea Álvarez Borque, who specialises in live electronics, is a notable exception. Together they made the piece River, which illustrates the journey of a river from glacier to ocean.
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TIJDCAPSULES
What links us to our past and our future? That question was central to the project entitled Tijdcapsules, which premiered at the Grachtenfestival 2022. A team consisting of Arjan Linker on trombone, Mattias Spee on piano and synthesizer, Benjamin de Boer on double bass, Gijs Idema on guitar and Dimitri Geelhoed on electronics set out to answer this question.
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DANSEN MET DE DOOD
In collaboration with writer/director Tabula Raas and voice actor Céline Vermeulen, Mattias Spee made a radio play entitled Dansen met de Dood. This musical piece of theatre -or this theatrical piece of music- was inspired by William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and deals with the temptation of suicide and being released from suffering.
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GOUDSBLOEM TRIO
From 2016 to 2020, Mattias Spee formed an ensemble with clarinetist Ana Prazeres and cellist Hadewych van Gent. They named their ensemble after their rehearsal space, which was Mattias’s home in the student housing facility at the Goudsbloemstraat in Amsterdam.
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